Project Summary

Evergreen City

Urban pine forest rehabilitation

The Beirut Pine Forest is adjacent to densely-populated areas where green spaces are practically nonexistent. The Beirut Hippodrome and the Beirut Pine Forest are separated by a vehicular road, but future implementations will be applied to ensure they are reconnected. Minimum intervention is applied, and the design maintains existing features by dividing the area into three zones that were already defined by three existing axes that lead to a central meeting point.

Presentation of the Holcim Awards Silver 2014 in the host city to “Evergreen City: Urban pine forest rehabilitation, Beirut, Lebanon” (l-r): Benedikt Vonnegut, CEO of Holcim Lebanon; Howayda Al-Harithy, Head of the Holcim Awards jury for Africa Middle East and Professor of Architecture, American University of Beirut; winners Yasmina Khalifé, Raëd Abillama, Bilal Hamad, Mayor of the City of Beirut; winners Youssef Abillama, Sawsan Bou Fakhreddine; and Bernard Fontana, CEO of Holcim Ltd.

The Lebanese coast is an urban concrete jungle with very limited green spaces and few public parks that cater for the wellbeing of the urban dwellers. The Beirut Pine Forest is centrally located in the city and can be easily accessible through main roads. It is surrounded by different functions such as residential, office, educational, cultural, and religious precincts. Softscape, an urban project starting from Downtown Beirut will have the Beirut Pine Forest as its final stop.

This zone offers learning pathways and open fields to host different events.

This zone is the greenest area of the forest and where families can meet in the proposed program.

This zone has a program that incorporates everything from a city that is not a building or a road.

People from all ages and backgrounds will use the forest throughout the year.

The overall objective is to improve the state of green cover and water infrastructure.

The overall objective is to improve the state of green cover and water infrastructure.

The existing natural landscape is preserved: The difference in level is 10m.

Project entry 2014 Africa Middle East - Evergreen City: Urban pine forest rehabilitation, Beirut, Lebanon
The Beirut Pine Forest is adjacent to densely-populated areas where green spaces are practically nonexistent. The Beirut Hippodrome and the Beirut Pine Forest are separated by a vehicular road, but future implementations will be applied to ensure they are reconnected. Minimum intervention is applied, and the design maintains existing features by dividing the area into three zones that were already defined by three existing axes that lead to a central meeting point.

Project entry 2014 Africa Middle East - Evergreen City: Urban pine forest rehabilitation, Beirut, Lebanon
The Lebanese coast is an urban concrete jungle with very limited green spaces and few public parks that cater for the wellbeing of the urban dwellers. The Beirut Pine Forest is centrally located in the city and can be easily accessible through main roads. It is surrounded by different functions such as residential, office, educational, cultural, and religious precincts. Softscape, an urban project starting from Downtown Beirut will have the Beirut Pine Forest as its final stop.

Project entry 2014 Africa Middle East - Evergreen City: Urban pine forest rehabilitation, Beirut, Lebanon
This zone is the greenest area of the forest and where families can meet in the proposed program.

Project entry 2014 Africa Middle East - Evergreen City: Urban pine forest rehabilitation, Beirut, Lebanon
This zone has a program that incorporates everything from a city that is not a building or a road.

The Beirut Pine Forest extends over more than 2 hectares and is a unique green space, considered the largest botanical garden in Lebanon, but lacking sufficient infrastructure to accommodate a large volume of visitors.

A rehabilitation plan has been proposed to develop the facilities and services needed in the park for opening it to the public and promoting it for cultural, social, sports, and environmental activities – while also conserving the park’s natural habitats.

Feature interview – Evergreen City: Urban pine forest rehabilitation, Beirut, Lebanon
“Winning the Holcim Awards Silver will certainly encourage the city to complete the project quickly and on schedule – so that the Beirut Pine Forest can hopefully be reopened as early as 2015!” – Raëd Abillama, Lebanon

Beirut offers little public green space. “Beirut Pine Forest” in the city center is soon to be reopened, after having been closed for decades. Architect Raëd Abillama has shown how the park should be upgraded to serve as many users as possible.

The architects divided the park into three zones: a green living room for leisure and relaxation, similar to a classic park; an urban extension & fitness zone, where a broad range of activities is possible, everything from a skating park to a playground to fitness areas; and a cultural, public programs & community events zone, with space for markets, festivals, outdoor exhibitions and installations, and a botanical garden. In this way, all visitors – an estimated 25,000 or more per day – will be able to use and enjoy the Pine Forest as they wish. The park is intended to be filled with life all week long, not just on the weekends.

Project author Raëd Abillama says: “Architecture is more than deciding which park bench to place where.”

March 05, 2015 | Global finalist entry | Beirut, Lebanon

Global finalist entry 2015 - Evergreen City: Urban pine forest rehabilitation
The Lebanese coast is an urban concrete jungle with very limited green spaces and few public parks that cater for the wellbeing of the urban dwellers. The Beirut Pine Forest is centrally located in the city and can be easily accessible through main roads. It is surrounded by different functions such as residential, office, educational, cultural, and religious precincts. Softscape, an urban project starting from Downtown Beirut will have the Beirut Pine Forest as its final stop.

As one of the three main Holcim Awards winners for Africa Middle East in 2014, “Evergreen City” automatically qualified as a finalist in the Global Holcim Awards 2015. All 15 finalist project teams were asked to submit an updated and more comprehensive entry that was evaluated by a global jury in March 2015.

The winners of the global phase of the 4th International Holcim Awards competition will be revealed on April 20, 2015. The results will be announced via the Holcim Awards website www.holcimawards.org.

The USD 2 million Holcim Awards is the most significant international competition for sustainable design. The jury composed of renowned specialists from around the world and headed by Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University (USA) will evaluate 15 projects out of more than 6,000 submissions. The finalists are the winners of the Holcim Awards Gold, Silver, and Bronze Awards 2014 in each of the five competition regions of the world.

The finalist projects competing for one of the three Global Holcim Awards prizes are located in Austria, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, France, Italy, Lebanon, Mexico, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey, and the USA and were entered by authors from these countries as well as from Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain. They reflect a broad variety of the current interpretation of sustainable construction combined with architectural excellence and enhanced quality of life beyond technical intervention.

The submissions will be evaluated by the Global Holcim Awards 2015 jury including Marc Angélil, Senior Dean of Architecture and Urban Design at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich, Switzerland), Alejandro Aravena, Principal of Elemental (Chile), Maria Atkinson, Founding Director of the Australian Green Building Council (Australia), Meisa Batayneh Maani, Principal of maisam architects and engineers (Jordan), Yolanda Kakabadse, President of WWF International (Ecuador), Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University (USA), Matthias Schuler, Principal of Transsolar(Germany), and Rolf Soiron, Chairman of the Board of the Holcim Foundation (Switzerland).

The Swiss-based Holcim Foundation promotes and illustrates the strength of diverse strategies of achieving greater sustainability of the built environment. As part of its approach, the Foundation publishes booklets on outstanding examples of applied sustainable construction. The initiatives of the Holcim Foundation include the USD 2 million Holcim Awards – the most significant international competition for sustainable design.

Since it was established in 2003, the Foundation has been supported by Holcim in more than 70 countries worldwide and is independent of commercial interests. Holcim is one of the world’s leading suppliers of cement and aggregates (crushed stone, gravel and sand) as well as further activities such as ready-mix concrete and asphalt, including services.

October 24, 2014 | VIDEO – PROJECT AUTHOR | Beirut, Lebanon

Architect Raëd Abillama views the sensitive integration of the existing state of the forest into a user-friendly urban park as the most outstanding element of his Holcim Awards Silver winning project. “Evergreen City: Urban pine forest rehabilitation” in Beirut, Lebanon develops the facilities and services needed in the existing park – a project commissioned by the municipality of Beirut with the help of Region Ile de France in 1992, for which a team of French and Lebanese architects (Jacques Sgard, France Trébucq, Ivy Papadakis, Jean-Claude Hardy, Pierre Neema and Frederic Francis) proposed a new layout – to open it to the public, and its promotion for cultural, social, sports, and environmental activities – while also maintaining and conserving the park’s natural habitats.

Holcim Awards 2014 Africa Middle East ceremony, Beirut, Lebanon
Presentation of the Acknowledgement prize for “White Canvas: Health center and school in refugee camp, Bassikounou, Mauritania” (l-r): Amer Moustafa, Member of the Holcim Awards jury 2014 Africa Middle East and Associate Dean, School of Architecture and Design American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates; winners Attila Szabadics and Mónica Rácz, ArchSus Group, Pécs, Hungary; Javier de Benito, Area Manager of Holcim for Africa Middle East.

Holcim Awards 2014 Africa Middle East ceremony, Beirut, Lebanon
Representatives of all five Holcim Awards Acknowledgement prize-winning teams with projects in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Mauritania, Palestine and Rwanda are congratulated by Amer Moustafa, Member of the Holcim Awards jury 2014 Africa Middle East and Associate Dean, School of Architecture and Design American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (4th from right) and Javier de Benito, Area Manager of Holcim for Africa Middle East (3rd from right).

Holcim Awards 2014 Africa Middle East ceremony, Beirut, Lebanon
Presentation of the “Next Generation” 1st prize for “Bio-Mimicry: Water research center, Fika Patso Dam, South Africa” (l-r): Daniel Irurah, jury member and Senior Lecturer, School of Architecture & Planning, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa; winner Jurie Swart, South Africa; and Edward Schwarz, General Manager of the Holcim Foundation, Switzerland.

Holcim Awards 2014 Africa Middle East ceremony, Beirut, Lebanon
Presentation of the “Next Generation” 3rd prize for “Machinarium: Regenerative urban catalyst and textile production, Pretoria, South Africa” (l-r): Daniel Irurah, jury member and Senior Lecturer, School of Architecture & Planning, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa; winner Heidi van Eeden, University of Pretoria, South Africa; and Edward Schwarz, General Manager of the Holcim Foundation, Switzerland.

Holcim Awards 2014 Africa Middle East ceremony, Beirut, Lebanon
Presenting the Holcim Awards main prize-winning projects: Howayda Al-Harithy, Head of the Holcim Awards jury for Africa Middle East and Professor of Architecture, American University of Beirut.

Holcim Awards 2014 Africa Middle East ceremony, Beirut, Lebanon
Presenting the Holcim Awards Acknowledgement prize-winning projects: Amer Moustafa, Member of the Holcim Awards jury 2014 Africa Middle East and Associate Dean, School of Architecture and Design American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.

Holcim Awards 2014 Africa Middle East ceremony, Beirut, Lebanon
Presenting the “Next Generation” prize-winning projects: Daniel Irurah, Member of the Holcim Awards jury 2014 Africa Middle East and Senior Lecturer, School of Architecture and Planning University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Holcim Awards Silver 2014 – Evergreen City: Urban pine forest rehabilitation, Beirut, Lebanon
The Beirut Pine Forest is centrally located in the city and can be easily accessible through main roads. It is surrounded by different functions such as residential, office, educational, cultural, and religious precincts. Softscape, an urban project starting from Downtown Beirut will have the Beirut Pine Forest as its final stop.

Holcim Awards Bronze 2014 – Incremental Construction: Low-cost modular housing scheme, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
The project is situated in an area earmarked for total renewal in a typical neighborhood of Addis Ababa, one of the fastest-growing cities in Africa. New constructions in the city predominantly use concrete frame and cast in-situ construction; and the city has banned natural materials from being used in buildings since 2009, limiting the solutions available for house construction. It aimed to investigate possibilities for an alternative urban housing unit in this context.

Holcim Awards “Next Generation” 1st prize 2014 –Bio-Mimicry: Water research center, Fika Patso Dam, South Africa
This project explores whether nature and architecture can amalgamate to become a hybrid solution in a vast landscape which has lost its reference to place and time. The transformation of place and time through architecture results in a progressive fusion giving meaning to a certain non-place lacking character and spatial qualities and resulting in an awakened space. This led to the idea of spatial reawakening through the medium of architecture.

A rehabilitation plan for a pine forest park in Beirut, Lebanon by Raëd Abillama of Raëd Abillama Architects from Lebanon won Silver. The urban plan develops the facilities and services needed in the existing park – a project commissioned by the municipality of Beirut with the help of Region Ile de France in 1992, for which a team of French and Lebanese architects (Jacques Sgard, France Trébucq, Ivy Papadakis, Jean-Claude Hardy, Pierre Neema and Frederic Francis) proposed a new layout – to open it to the public, and promoting it for cultural, social, sports, and environmental activities – while also maintaining and conserving the park’s natural habitats. Environmental standards and urban needs will be integrated in a seamless way, enhancing the sense of belonging to the wider community.

The project’s bold intention to open up a territory – located in the midst of the city’s “concrete jungle” and essentially suppressed and forgotten in the collective memory – to the public at large was strongly commended by the jury. The city of Beirut, under constant pressure by private development to use every piece of available land for more and more expansion, must rehabilitate its green spaces and make them accessible to the public – a restoration not only of its natural habitat but most importantly of the very ideal of the city as collective body – Beirut’s civitas.

Project entry 2014 Africa Middle East - Evergreen City: Urban pine forest rehabilitation, Beirut, Lebanon
The Beirut Pine Forest is adjacent to densely-populated areas where green spaces are practically nonexistent. The Beirut Hippodrome and the Beirut Pine Forest are separated by a vehicular road, but future implementations will be applied to ensure they are reconnected. Minimum intervention is applied, and the design maintains existing features by dividing the area into three zones that were already defined by three existing axes that lead to a central meeting point.

Project entry 2014 Africa Middle East - Evergreen City: Urban pine forest rehabilitation, Beirut, Lebanon
The Lebanese coast is an urban concrete jungle with very limited green spaces and few public parks that cater for the wellbeing of the urban dwellers. The Beirut Pine Forest is centrally located in the city and can be easily accessible through main roads. It is surrounded by different functions such as residential, office, educational, cultural, and religious precincts. Softscape, an urban project starting from Downtown Beirut will have the Beirut Pine Forest as its final stop.

Project entry 2014 Africa Middle East - Evergreen City: Urban pine forest rehabilitation, Beirut, Lebanon
This zone is the greenest area of the forest and where families can meet in the proposed program.

Project entry 2014 Africa Middle East - Evergreen City: Urban pine forest rehabilitation, Beirut, Lebanon
This zone has a program that incorporates everything from a city that is not a building or a road.

The Beirut Pine Forest is a green space extending over more than two hectares with a natural ecosystem typical of the Mediterranean region including native tree species, shrubs, and plants. The unique green space known locally as Horsh El Snoubar or Bois de Pins is located in the middle of the capital and considered the largest botanical garden in Lebanon.

“Horsh El Snoubar” is a unique green space in Beirut that was re-developed in 1992 through a project commissioned by the Municipality of Beirut with the help of Region Ile-de-France; a team of French and Lebanese architects and landscape architects (from France: Jacques Sgard, France Trébucq, Ivy Papadakis, Jean-Claude Hardy; from Lebanon: Pierre Neema and Frederic Francis) proposed a new layout for the forest.

A rehabilitation plan has been proposed to develop the facilities and services needed in the park for opening it to the public and promoting it for cultural, social, sports, and environmental activities – while at the same time maintaining and conserving the park’s natural habitats. Environmental standards and urban needs will be integrated in a seamless way, enhancing the sense of belonging to the wider community.

Progress: The natural ecosystem of the park is maintained by limiting the number of interventions to the minimum required. Services and attractions for different target groups (children, youth, adults, senior, disabled, etc.) are secured. The project is promoted as enhancing the site’s capacity to host cultural, social, sports and environmental activities. Different attractions will be created to educate people about the richness and importance of forests and green spaces in Lebanon.

People: Collaboration is established between the private sector, public sector and local NGOs to develop a maintenance and operations scheme that secures long-term monitoring and evaluation of results. The park will open for a diverse range of events (art, cultural, sports, social, educational, environmental, etc.) organized by local community groups.

Planet: Environmentally-friendly materials and products are used where relevant, such as solar panels for lighting, sorting of wastes, potential re-use of biomass waste as fertilizer; installation of water-efficient supplies in the services blocks, etc. A fire prevention and security system will be implemented to reduce the risk of forest fires. The system will include provision of water reservoirs, fire engines, manual tools and equipment for rapid fire abatement.

Prosperity: This project shows an innovative model in financing where the Municipality of Beirut will share the cost of rehabilitation, operation and maintenance with the private sector and community groups. Upon completion of the rehabilitation, a maintenance and operations agreement will commence between the municipality and the private sector, to secure proper evaluation and monitoring of results.

Place: Interdependencies of landscape, infrastructure, urban fabric and architecture – the first priority in this project is to maintain its environmental aspect. To secure its cautious restoration, a local environmental NGO expert in forest restoration is involved in the development and implementation of the project.